


At Once Our Time Devour

by enevera



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Season/Series 04, Quentin Coldwater Deserved Better, Quentin Coldwater Lives, References to Depression, Season/Series 01, Time Travel, Trauma, eliot is also a mess, main ship is queliot, others are more minor, please read the warnings, possibly some PTSD later, quentin is a mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25388953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enevera/pseuds/enevera
Summary: The last clear thing he sees before he passes out is a younger him, watching with an expression that lies somewhere between shock and confusion and horror, with much shorter hair and a far less haunted look in his eyes.What the fuck.Through the usual level of unexplained happenstance, Eliot and Quentin show up in an alternate timeline, Eliot after getting gutted with axes and Quentin after he's died. Separated and with no idea what's happening or how to get back, they have to find each other and a way home, all while dealing with Emotions and their younger selves.
Relationships: Mike McCormick/Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater & Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh, William "Penny" Adiyodi/Kady Orloff-Diaz/Julia Wicker, minor - Relationship
Comments: 20
Kudos: 88





	1. Had We But World Enough And Time

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if this is ooc, i saw a plot bunny and chased it. yell at me in the comments please.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fic title and chapter title are both from the poem _To His Coy Mistress_ by Andrew Marvell

Between one blink and the next, Eliot goes from The Happy Place, to what looks like the middle of the woods, to what is definitely the middle of a party. What the fuck.

He takes a moment to try and grasp what’s going on, but only comes up with Pain and Flashing Lights and Noise. All of it sucks, especially the Pain. He doesn’t even know where it's coming from, which is something he should really figure out. He follows the feeling to his abdomen and hisses when his fingers meet wet warmth. They come away red. Huh.

Suddenly, the rest of the world filters in and he realizes several things at once: everyone is staring at him, the noise is actually blaring 2010s pop music, and the party he’s been teleported into is in The Cottage.

What the fuck.

He almost wants to say that he’s back in The Happy Place, but he’s in Pain and that doesn’t happen in The Happy Place. Unless it’s of the tortured emotional variety, in which case, there’s an abundance, but he’s pretty sure he got stabbed, not forced to face all the times he was a horrible person. Again. 

So, this must be the Real Cottage. But how did he get here? Was it the Monster leaving that transported him there? Because the bastard’s definitely gone, or he wouldn’t be in control. He knows he hadn’t found another doo-

Eliot’s internal monologue is rudely disrupted by his intense need to hunch over in pain and cradle his stomach, which naturally leads to him falling to the ground, blood dripping in rivlets onto the wooden floors. Well, that’ll definitely stain. Oops.

He hopes distantly that someone is running off to get medics or healers or whatever, as he lies bleeding out. Everything is getting very blurry and distorted. Was the music that echo-y when he’d poofed in here? He doesn’t remember Taylor Swift sounding like that.

The last clear thing he sees before he passes out is a younger him, watching with an expression that lies somewhere between shock and confusion and horror, with much shorter hair and a far less haunted look in his eyes.

What the fuck.

**-**

Quentin wasn’t sure what he’d expected to be on the other side of the door Penny had sent him through, but it wasn’t a random street in New York City. He also hadn’t expected it to be raining, but that goes without saying, really. Still, the rain is cold and given that it’s the first thing he’s felt since he died, he steps fully out of the doorway and into the storm, eager. He doesn’t think to turn around until he hears the door close behind him, somehow audible through the thundering of the rain, and realizes that not only is the door closed, it’s not even there anymore. That’s a message, if he’s ever seen one.

He turns back toward the street and tries to fight off the slowly creeping feeling that there’s something Wrong with this afterlife. And, it has to be his afterlife, right? What else would it be? He’s dead, the dead go to the afterlife, like Julia’s friends and their bowling alley. This must be his bowling alley.

But something’s Wrong and he can’t quite parse out what, exactly.

Honestly, Quentin probably would’ve stood there in the rain until he’d figured it out, if not for the sudden arrival of the single last person he’d expected to find in his afterlife: James.

“Hey, Q!” He calls, walking briskly toward him, wearing a grin and carrying a briefcase, black umbrella held above him. “What’re you doing here, man? Long time, no see!”

Quentin smiles awkwardly as James approaches and pulls him into one of his five second hugs. It occurs to him that he didn’t know James had died and he begins to feel a little like a bad friend, former jealousy over Julia or not. “Hey, man. What’s, uh, what’s up?”

James laughs and pulls him down the sidewalk with him, at a (thankfully) far more sedate pace. “I should be asking you that! Where’s your umbrella?” Quentin opens his mouth to respond, but James barrels on. “Ah, I missed you, Q. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve seen you and Jules, since you’ve been off at that mysterious grad school of yours. How is it, by the way? Julia hasn’t said much.” He laughs again, but it carries a distinctly forced undertone. The pace he’d set slows to a stop as he turns to face Quentin more fully.

“Oh, uh, it’s fine, I guess,” Quentin stammers out. He didn’t think that James would have much of an interest in Quentin’s life before he’d died. But wait, what was that about Julia? 

Quentin eyes James warily. “Um, what do you mean, Julia hasn’t said much…?” He’s starting to get very confused because Julia definitely didn’t go to Brakebills and now that he’s really thinking, he has the distinct memory of her telling him that she’d “broken up” with James because his memories of her had gotten wiped. And, he’s also pretty sure Julia _isn’t dead_ , but that’s a whole other thing he doesn't want to think about.

The Wrongness is getting worse.

“Oh,” James laughs weakly, more of a sad huff than anything else. “It’s just that when she calls, she kinda...dances around actually telling me anything. She, uh, she still hasn’t told me what classes she’s taking.” James rubs the back of his neck in a nervous gesture and his smile looks kinda pained.

“Oh,” Quentin says, partially because he doesn’t know what to say to that, but mostly because he’s still very confused. Still, James is looking like he wants an answer so Quentin just spits out the most comforting thing he can think of. “I’m sure she’ll tell you more next time you call.”

“Really?” James looks pleased, and starts pulling Quentin along again, still slow, but gaining speed at an easy rate. “Will you ask her for me? I’d really appreciate it, dude.”

“Uh, sure,” Quentin says, still largely preoccupied by all the things that don’t make sense about this. _Is this James just the dead memories that James had of Julia?_ He wonders, before realizing that doesn’t make sense. Julia had gotten part of her memory wiped and this hadn’t happened to her. After all, she’d gotten her memories back without the trip to the Underworld that this situation would imply to be necessary...

“Ah, thanks, Quentin.” James pats him on the back roughly, jolting him out of his thoughts in time for him to avoid tripping from it. “Oh, did you get a haircut, by the way? It looks good,” James says, smile affixed and mood back to the sunny thing it was at the beginning of the conversation.

“Uh, yeah, thanks,” Quentin says, before deciding that his thoughts need to be heard. He pulls them to a full stop, and the speedwalking that James had been aiming toward is cut off. “Wait,” he says, building the sentence in his head. “Uh, I’m confused. What’s going on here? I mean, this is the afterlife, right? Julia isn’t here. She’s not dead. I don’t even remember hearing about _you_ being dead! I don’t understand what’s happening.” He knows he sounds like he’s pleading, but the stronger the Wrongness gets, the more concerned Quentin becomes. 

“Whoa,” James says, expression suddenly deeply concerned. He reaches out and sets a stabilizing hand on Quentin’s shoulder. “What do you mean, ‘dead?’ Are you sure you’re okay, Q? Have you been taking the right meds?”

“What do you mean, ‘what do I mean?’ I mean, _‘dead!_ ’ _I’m_ dead! This is the afterlife!” Quetin exclaims, getting progressively aggravated, hands waving about as he talks. 

James looks very alarmed. “Uh, Q, you’re not dead and this isn’t the afterlife. Do, uh, do you want me to call your doctor or something? I really don’t think you’re okay...” His pitying expression only serves to push Quentin farther into the realm of frustration.

“Yes, I am dead,” he insists, glaring. “I died, I know I died. I fucking got blown up and went to the fucking Underworld and had to talk to fucking Penny! I am definitely dead!” 

It’s only when James backs up a step that Quentin realizes he’s kinda gotten really loud and really aggressive. He takes a deep breath and feels embarrassment and something in a similar flavor to shame rise up in him. “Sorry,” he murmurs, ducking his head.

“Okay,” says James, sounding distinctly not okay. “Okay, uh, well I don’t know who Penny is and I kinda gotta go to work. How about you, uh,” he fiddles around in the pockets of his expensive winter coat for a minute before pulling out a set of keys and a small, wrapped umbrella. “Here, these are my spare keys and an extra umbrella. How about you go stay at my apartment today and we can talk after I get off work? School clearly hasn’t been treating you well if it’s got you convinced that you’re dead…” He trails off with an awkward laugh, face looking the most pained that it’s been throughout the conversation.

“Thanks,” mumbles Quentin, taking the keys and umbrella limply and more out of shame and the fact that this is really not in his realm of expectancy than anything else. The Wrongness is growing more and more in his gut and he knows it’s not just because a few of the people walking on the street are still eyeing him.

James releases a relieved sigh, like he was afraid of what would happen if Quentin had refused his offer. “Okay, I gotta go, now. You remember where my apartment is, yeah?”

At Quentin’s nod, James takes his awkward smile and his shiny briefcase and big umbrella and continues on down toward wherever he works, leaving Quentin standing alone in the middle of the sidewalk with the keys and the horrible realization of what the Wrongness is.

Quentin’s not in the afterlife. He’s in a previous timeline, and he’s got no idea what the fuck to do about it.

 _Well_ , Quentin thinks, looking down at the keys James had handed to him. _Maybe one thing_.

He opens the umbrella and starts the slow walk toward James’s apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm putting song recs at the end of each chapter to try to motivate myself to update. I'd appreciate if y'all would comment abt them and also the story, but you do you! I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> _Tell Me Why by Three Days Grace_


	2. I'm Barely Breathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> please read the warnings in the chapter notes!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, thank you all for the lovely comments on the first chapter! I know I didn't reply, but I just couldn't think of anything to say that didn't sound disingenuous in its joy, so here we are!
> 
> Secondly, I've done a lot more thinking on the direction I want this story to go since I posted the first chapter, and so now it's time for warnings!
> 
> This story is going to be dealing with Quentin's suicide, depression, and trauma from the monster pretty explicitly. If this isn't going to be good for you, please don't read this story. I don't want anyone getting hurt.
> 
> This story is also going to be dealing with Eliot's trauma from the monster, his rejection of quentin and regret of that, and also anger over q's suicide when he finds out about it, because he will. Again, please don't read if any of that sounds bad for you.
> 
> Q and El are probably going to display some ptsd symptoms in this story, too. Please heed these warnings.
> 
> That said, tags are going to be added as this story continues and specific chapters will have warnings as needed. If, while reading, you have any concerns about how I'm writing certain things or you have a suggestion about a warning I should add, please leave a comment! I would really appreciate constructive criticism on those fronts.
> 
> Also, if any of you have questions about any of the cws listed above, feel free to reach out to me on tumblr at enevera.tumblr.com/ It's got nothing on there, but that's because I really only created it for this
> 
> Anyway, hope y'all enjoy! I promise this story will be more lighthearted than all the warnings imply! 
> 
> Still, tw for depression, suicide, and some dissociation this chapter, on Quentin's part. The suicide and depression is kinda graphic, but mostly just in the thought process of it. still, please be careful!

Eliot wakes up unable to feel his toes from cold and just _knows_ that he's about to suffer through a horrible day. He is about to be proven horribly correct.

The second of the many bad things of the day is how thoroughly his eyelids are stuck together, sleep and gunk keeping them closed. It takes far too much effort to open them and a full minute of blinking to be able to see without parts of the room diffusing into each other.

The first thing Eliot processes is the blindingly white ceiling and equally white shutters covering the window to his right. Unfortunately, that’s all he's able to process because that's when the lights hit him. He groans in pain and squeezes his eyes shut in a lackluster effort to block out the brightness and when that fails, makes a vain attempt to turn over and block the burning with the flimsy pillow his head had been placed on. Then, he is lovingly rewarded with the third bad thing: a shot of harsh pain ripping up his body from his abdomen.

It's enough to wake him up.

His eyes shoot open and, for a moment, Eliot can’t breathe. What the fuck is going on? Where is he? What had happened? Wh-

“Calm down, now, please. You’ll rip your stitches,” says a familiar voice, and Eliot manages to stop moving, if tensing every single muscle in his body a la rigor mortis counts. It kinda makes the pain worse, but Eliot’s used to pain and knows how to deal with it. If it comes to it, he can self-medicate, anyway.

A gentle hand touches his shoulder and pushes him back down, onto the cot he’s in. “Oh, stop that now. You’re hurting yourself,” says the voice and Eliot turns wide eyes up towards Professor Lipson, who looks far more put together than he remembers her being. She’s watching him with a calculating expression that doesn’t quite match up with her words or gentle prodding to relax, which Eliot does, slowly, after a few moments of searching eye contact with his old professor.

Eliot swallows, finds his throat to be lacking in moisture, and opens his mouth. “Hi,” he says, and his voice sounds raw, like he’d spent hours screaming, and not in the fun way. “Can, uh, I have some water?” He speaks slowly, feeling a coughing fit on the horizon and wanting to avoid it.

“Of course,” nods Lipson, turning to the counter behind her to get a cup, conveniently giving Eliot a chance to study the room he's in more, now that the photophobia has been chased away by shock and a more than substantial dose of pain. Like the ceiling and the blinds he’d seen earlier, the rest of the room is painted varying shades in grayscale, largely leaning toward the lighter side of that spectrum, the way hospital rooms are wont to be. Further inspection reveals that the only furnishings in the room are the hospital bed he's laying on, the side table next to him, and the counter Lipson is shuffling about at. Despite how boring it is, Eliot can still appreciate that it’s a private room and not out in the open where most of the cots are.

However, the lack of stimuli means that Eliot doesn’t have anything to distract him from his, admittedly hazy, but still clear enough memory of the night before. It’d be remiss to say that Eliot isn’t used to seeing a younger version of himself going about his day, what with all the memories he’d had to revisit, but this time he was sure that he hadn’t been in the Happy Place. What really sucked, though, was that he’d thought he’d filled his quota of teleport-y Star Trek bullshit for the remainder of his life, but he probably should’ve given up on that when he got possessed by a god so old that its only name was The Monster, because _someone_ had a creative parent.

Further self pity is prevented by an ice cube from a small cup of them being placed gently at Eliot’s lips, and it’s only when he goes to try and hold the cube himself that he realizes he can’t move his hand. Still sucking on the ice, he carefully tests the rest of his limbs, slowly realizing that maybe the cold room isn’t the only reason he can’t feel his toes.

Anger tinged with fear curls itself up in his gut, burning.

“Why can’t I move anything but my head?” Eliot asks immediately after Lipson moves the ice cube away from his face, defensive. His voice, though still weak, sounds a lot less like he tried gurgling razor blades and a bit more like he swallowed sand, which is an improvement, if not the ideal. Still, a scratchy voice isn’t enough to make his glare any less intimidating, given how Lipson’s mouth forms a tight line before she starts to answer with no _excessive prodding_ necessary.

“Well, it’s a spell,” she starts. “Mostly, it’s to stop you from scratching at your stitches, but it’s also because **–** ” She’s cut off by the door behind her shutting, but the new arrival finishes her sentence for her.

“Because we don’t quite know who you are. You could be dangerous.”

Eliot scoffs, recognizing the voice. “Oh, _please_ . If I were a danger to you, you’d know by now. You’ve known me for _years_ , after all,” He sneers as his glare meets with Fogg’s eyes and, for a moment, he’s surprised by the clarity there, before he realizes that things must’ve played out a fair bit differently in this timeline ( _because that has to be what this is, right?_ ), or else that hasn’t happened yet…

Dean Fogg frowns, which seems to be one of his most common facial expressions, second only to the slightly disapprovingly neutral mask he’s been partial to for as long as Eliot’s known him. “Professor Lipson,” the older man says as he turns his body toward the woman in question, still maintaining eye contact with Eliot. Mark of the wary, that. “Would you mind leaving us, for a moment? There’s something I’d like to...discuss with Mr Waugh, here.”

Lipson nods hesitantly, gaze flitting from Dean Fogg to Eliot and back again, before she walks to the door and exits with nothing but a soft click marking the event.

For a few moments after Lipson leaves, it’s a staring contest, Fogg stern and Eliot defiant.

In the end, it’s Fogg who breaks first. “Eliot,” he sighs, exasperation coloring his voice.

“Henry,” Eliot returns, snarky in the indignity of being paralyzed in a hospital bed.

“Look,” Fogg says, bringing his hands up in a ‘please listen to me’ gesture. “Just tell me what timeline you’re from and how you got here. We’ll figure out where to go from there.”

Eliot considers Fogg for a moment. “Will you remove the spell if I answer?”

“Sure, why not?” says Fogg, put upon and sounding like he’s thinking of all the reasons why not to do just that, all in excruciating detail.

Eliot nods in acknowledgement of the deal. “I’m from timeline 40,” he says. “And I have no idea how the fuck I got here.”

Fogg stares at him for a moment. “Well,” he says. “Fuck.”

Eliot quirks an eyebrow. “What a glowing review,” he says with an ironic chuckle, turning his head back to the ceiling. Clearly Fogg doesn’t plan on being any help if all he’s going to do with the information is cuss about it. Like that’s ever gotten anyone anywhere. If it had, Eliot would have had a _very_ different life.

“Oh, get off of your high horse,” Fogg scolds and Eliot hears him step closer until the other man is standing over him. Eliot watches him without moving his head and feels some of the anger and fear disperse as Fogg performs the counter to the paralysis spell he’s under. “I’m allowed to be dismayed that this isn’t the last time I’ve got to live through this. And, although you and your chuckle headed friends are the source of most of my problems, I’ll have you know that some of them, like the timelines, aren't quite a consequence of you all. And, I’ve earned my right to be old and tired.”

“Oh?” Eliot remarks, wincing as Fogg helps him sit up in the now-raised cot, which is somewhat uncharacteristic of him, but less so when you consider that torn stitches mean less information out of Eliot. “And here I thought Jane Chatwin would count as one of us chuckle heads, especially given the nature of all these...loops.” He leans back against the magically raised top half of the bed, longing for a cigarette.

Fogg takes in a sharp breath of surprise through his nose at Eliot’s comment. “Yes,” he agrees, seeming to take the conversation in stride. “Yes, I suppose she would. Though, honestly, you are correct. This is her problem. You all would be far easier to manage if not for the _issues_ she’s brought in her wake.”

“That’s fair, I guess,” Eliot says, watching Fogg again. “So, any idea how to get me home? Because I’m pretty sure it was a bad time for me to leave.”

“‘Pretty sure?’” Fogg repeats, never one to miss the details you want him to. Eliot just shrugs. He’s seen enough movies to know that telling people about the future tends to end badly, even if Fogg’s the only one who’d remember it.

Fogg purses his lips, but doesn’t push it. “Right,” he starts. “I’m afraid this is a bit of an unprecedented situation. The only experience I have with anything close to this type of timeline crossover is use of the Tesla Flexion.”

“Which is, of course, perfectly useless in this situation, given that I’m not going to be walking anytime soon,” Eliot continues for Fogg, gesturing to his abdomen as he talks.

“Yes,” Fogg sighs. “So it would seem. I’ll contact Jane to see what she knows about this, but until then, _please_ don’t leave the infirmary.” As he speaks, Fogg paces slowly toward the door.

“Why not?” Eliot asks. “Still don’t trust me?”

“No, it’s not that. I’m not particularly worried about you being trustworthy. Rather, you gave everyone in the Cottage quite the scare last night. I don’t need you upsetting the peace anymore than that did,” Fogg relays, hand now resting on the door handle. “Now, I’m going to let Professor Lipson back in to fill you in on your condition. Don’t tell her, or anyone else, _anything_.”

And with that, Fogg opens the door and is gone, evidently to retrieve Lipson from wherever she’d disappeared to.

Eliot sighs, and turns his head to stare out into the middle distance. It looks like he’s in for a bit of a boring stay.

-

Quentin probably should have spent the walk to James’s apartment being productive and thinking about what he was going to do, but as it was, he just lets himself dissociate into a blank void of nothingness, only vaguely aware of where he’s going, until he finds himself standing in front of the door to James’s home. Shaking himself out of the cloud he was in, Quentin marvels at even being able to find this place, regardless of what he’d told James about remembering where it is. The era of his life with James as a main player seems so far off that it’s unbelievable.

More grounded now, Quentin closes the umbrella he doesn’t remember carrying up here and takes the keys out from where he’d shoved them in his pockets. Unlocking the door, it’s like he's suddenly twenty-one again and sour about meeting Julia’s new boyfriend for the first time.

James’s apartment is exactly as he remembers it: greyscale and sleek. Lots of light, very neat, leather couches; very Ivy League. It’s the type of refined that isn’t opulent but still wants you to know that you could _never_ afford something like it.

With something like relief balancing precariously in his chest, Quentin can honestly say that he hadn’t missed this place, this part of his life. In a way, his story didn’t truly start until he got to Brakebills. This is all just the filling in of blanks on the Mad Libs page of his existence before Magic.

God, he sounds like a bad promotional movie quote.

Hesitantly, he takes a step into the living room, letting his feet drag over the thin carpet. As he does, the pain of walking across New York City in shoes that are really not meant for that makes itself known in the form of stabbing pain. Quentin hisses lowly, tensing up, and makes his way, gingerly, to one of the plush black couches, where he collapses back into it, glad to be off his feet.

Sighing heavily, he bends down to pull off his shoes and then just lets himself _sit_ for a moment; lets the weight he’d been keeping at bay since he got to the Underworld crash against him, breaking like a wave.

And that’s part of what he’d learned, in those months of spiralling in that apartment with the Monster: it comes in waves. Waves of crushing pain whenever he saw that _thing_ wearing _Eliot’s_ face, waves of horribly numbing nothingness all the time between the hurt.

It had been a similar nothingness, this one colored with something between a sick relief and resignation, that had allowed him to just... _stand there_ as he was burned by his own magic; had allowed him to not care until he’d realized just what, exactly, he’d done. It had been like ice down his spine, that conversation with Penny 40 in the Underworld and watching his funeral hadn’t really helped. He’d been mourned, yes, and he’d died what could, generously, be called a hero’s death, but… What he’d wanted to stop was the hopelessness, the numbness, and the pain. Clearly, it’s not over if he’s still here.

Honestly, he should’ve given up on suicide as an escape from the world when he found out there was something _after_. After isn’t what he’d ever wanted from death, anyway.

Quentin wants to rest.

But he can’t, because he’s got shit to do and he’s done this before: bottled up his feelings in order to figure out what the fuck he’s doing. He’s pushed through it before.

But, for now, he just let’s himself sit there and feel.

-

Quentin doesn’t know how long he sits there, processing his feelings, only that when he comes out of it, he’s stiff and it’s three in the afternoon. Sighing tiredly, he stretches his arms in a cheap effort to release the weight on his chest out into the air.

Then, leaning forward and setting his elbows on his crossed legs, he begins to think. He starts with what he knows.

He knows that he’s in an alternate timeline. He knows that this Julia is at Brakebills. He knows that James and Julia are dating, (for now, because based off of what James had said and 23’s attachment to his timeline’s Julia, he’s not sure how long that’s going to last). He also knows that any information about his predicament is going to be found one of two ways: either through Brakebills or the Library. And, given that he’d rather avoid calling the attention of the Library onto him, ever, much less when he’s in a different timeline, with no plan, purpose, or back up, he’s going to have to try Brakebills.

Still, that’s also kind of a problem on its own, because he rather doubts the wards will let him in, given that there’s already a version of him there, and he doesn’t have an alumni key, or know a way to steal one. So, basically, he’s fucked, because the only other way he knows of someone getting into Brakebills when they weren’t supposed to be there is Marina from the time she and Julia trapped him in his own worst nightmare, which, call him a wimp, but he doesn’t really feel like inflicting on anyone else.

But, even if he ignores all of that, Quentin still doesn’t know why he’s here or what he’d be doing by trying to contact Brakebills. Is he going to try to get back to his timeline? Is it even worth it, to try that? Clearly, someone in the Underworld, or whoever decides where the metro goes, thought he’d be needed here in whatever timeline he’d walked into. Who’s to say they don’t know what they’re doing? Maybe he’s just here to live life normally. 

But, on the other hand, what if he’s here because Jane Chatwin called him here? What if he showed up here, because she needs him to do something? What if, if she did call him to do something, he could go back, after... 

But then Quentin remembers what Penny 40 had shown him, remembers his friends mourning, remembers Eliot throwing a peach into the fire...a fire for him. Because he’d died. Because he’d killed himself. Clearly, even if he goes back and the Underworld lets him keep living, his friends still have to mourn him. What if he destroys them in a different way, by going back? What if they’ve already moved on when he gets back? If he gets back. If...

Quentin chuckles hollowly, burying his head in his hands. Honestly, the more he thinks on it, the more he feels certain that killing himself was the worst decision of his life. Distantly, he recalls an article he’d read, about how someone had interviewed a bunch of people who’d tried to kill themselves by jumping off a bridge and discovered that almost every one of them, in the seconds before they’d hit the water, had wanted to live. For the first time in his life, he can understand why.

“Fuck,” he mutters, wiping at the tears trying to escape his eyes. Quentin probably would have continued crying and thinking himself into circles, right there on the stickily leather couch, if not for the stark sound of keys turning in the lock on the front door to the apartment.

Hurriedly, Quentin makes an uninspired effort to straighten himself out, standing up from the couch to brush out his shirt and then collapsing back into it, having forgotten that the reason he’d sat down in the first place was because his feet were fucked up. And, because his life sucks, that’s when he looks up towards the front door, and promptly has his composure kicked in the stomach. 

Because, right there behind an awkwardly smiling James, is his best friend, Julia Wicker, looking confused and young and _so different_ from the Julia of his timeline.

 _Oh_ , he thinks numbly. _So this is how it’s going to be_.

_Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Sorry ahead of time btw if chapters take a bit to come out. Writing depression takes a lot more out of me than I was expecting :/
> 
> Also! Is anyone interested in being a beta for this story? I don't need one really for the writing, cause I think I've got that mostly taken care of, but I'd really appreciate someone to tell me how I am with writing everyone in character. This is the first time I'm writing for this fandom, so I'm kinda a bit worried about that.
> 
> That said, the song rec and where I got the title of the chapter is:  
>  _Breakeven by The Script_


	3. And I Don't Want The World To See Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First contact

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! Hi, everyone! Sorry, it's been so long, but you do benefit some from it, I promise! This chapter is longer than the first two combined, so have fun with that lol
> 
> I do have some other notes, though, so here are those!
> 
> First, this fic now has a beta, the wonderful [redtoblack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redtoblack/pseuds/redtoblack) who has been a great help! Of course, any remaining mistakes in this chapter are mine, but trust me when I say that it used to be a lot worse lol.
> 
> Secondly, there's a bit in the third section in parentheses. This is a reference/loose paraphrase of a quote from the books. Also, just putting it out there that the dashes (-) mean that there's a hard pov change!
> 
> Thirdly, the song of this chapter (yes they're going in the beginning now), is _Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls_. I recommend you give it a listen while reading this lol. Also, I'm now adding chapter titles, all of which will be coming from the chapter songs besides the first and last, when we get there.
> 
> Well, that's all, I think. Enjoy!

It is currently three in the afternoon, according to the bland clock sitting on the bland wall, and Eliot has resorted to counting the bland scratches and scuffs on the bland ceiling. So far, he’s counted thirty-seven and he’d much rather be doing _literally anything else_ , but apparently being an invalid also means he’s doomed to die of boredom. Honestly, at this point, he’d even accept books, despite his intense hatred of reading, that’s how desperate he is. However, Lipson, when she’d come back to give him a run down of everything fucked up with his body, had said that he wasn’t allowed to lift his arms to hold anything heavier than a cup, much less any book she could get him. Then, she’d put his bed back down, leaving him to lie there and watch the ceiling watch him.

It doesn’t help that all he really has to think about is his situation, because in some ways it’s truly depressing. He’s alone in a familiar, unfamiliar place with familiar, unfamiliar people, with no idea why or how he’s there and being forced into relying on Fogg, one of the least reliable people he knows. And that’s not even starting on the list Lipson had read to him of his injuries, and how the longer it went the more it felt like some sort of will. At least the world has magic in this timeline, so he doesn’t have to do all the healing naturally.

Still, the things the Monster had done to his body aren’t great. Lipson had prescribed several potions to him for malnutrition, his partially rotted molars, and all the drugs Eliot had apparently gotten pumped full of while he’d been possessed. Not that he could tell Lipson that, even if he’d wanted to. All the people Eliot would like to talk to about the Monster and anything related are in timeline forty, where he is very much not, no matter how much he wishes he were.

The one thing he’s confused about is his stomach wound. Lipson had said that they’d had to used stitches on it because whatever had hit him had been “weird magic” and “didn’t like other spells” to the point that anything more than some light healing spells would fuck everything up. Of course, this means fuck all to Eliot beyond that he’s going to be healing for longer than he’d like and that there’s no one to tell him exactly how he’d gotten chopped up.

By the time Lipson had stalked off to do whatever else she does, Eliot had already been enjoying the beginnings of a headache and an equally potent wave of irritability.

Now, though the headache had been staved off by a short nap, the cantankerous mood remains. It’s a good thing that Eliot is used to cantankerous moods, otherwise he suspects the Healing students that have been checking up on him would be getting far more than just tense silences. That said, Eliot is starting to think he won’t be seeing another medic again for a while given the poorly-hushed, faintly annoyed chatter he’s been hearing outside the door to his room for the past ten or so minutes. If anyone were going to come spare him from what he knows is coming, they already would’ve.

At least the wards Lipson had sent up to keep unwanted company away are complicated enough that Eliot has enough time to mentally prepare himself to see younger, and probably extremely suspicious, versions of his friends. Well, mostly he’s been preparing for Margo and Quentin. He can handle himself and anyone else, but he already knows that seeing these versions of the two most important people in his life will be difficult, especially if it’s anything like the whole deal with Penny 23; he remembers how pained Kady had been. Honestly, his plan so far boils down to _don’t cry_ , but he figures he’ll be able to manage it, if he thinks of all the situations he’s been in that are _worse_ than seeing real versions of your best friend and deeply wronged ex and _not_ being able to pull them into his arms to make up for however long he was...gone.

That’s why he’s been distracting himself by counting scratches, all the while half listening to the whispers outside his door and trying to rebuild the armor he’d let down when he’d last seen Qunetin in that park...

Then, the commotion outside stops and Eliot takes a final fortifying breath right as the door handle twists, someone opening it from the outside.

“Well,” he says, managing to sound far more nonchalant than he really is. “Took you all long enough.”

And with that, he guides his eyes away from the ceiling and lets them settle on the familiar, unfamiliar faces of this timeline’s Margo Hanson, Alice Quinn, Eliot Waugh, and, most painfully, one Quentin Coldwater.

-

Quentin knows he’s done a lot of weird shit in his life, but he can confidently say that this is the weirdest. Well, semi-confidently. Really, he’s fairly certain that nothing can top getting accepted into a magical school and then, a few months in, breaking into its infirmary to interrogate a doppelganger of one of his best friends, but given the past couple months, holding his breath probably isn’t advisable. At least it’s the first time he’s committed breaking and entering, right? And it _had_ taken some convincing (read: threatening) on Margo’s part to get him to join her and Eliot in their plan. 

He’d probably feel better about his judgement if it hadn’t come as a genuine surprise to him when Margo told them all about the time she’d robbed a bank, even if it did make Quentin feel slightly better about their odds in succeeding. Alice’s offer to help with any wards they came across alarmed him more than anything Margo could confess to, anyway, but with her involved, he’d already felt much better about not being caught, given that she’d brushed up on better sneaky-type spells after the whole ordeal with The Beast summoning thing nearly got the two of them kicked out. And, breaking into a building is far less dangerous than trying to contact the dead. Or, at least, that’s what Quentin has been telling himself.

Now, however, Quentin’s calmed down significantly from where he’d been with this plan just thirty minutes ago. Or, well, calm is maybe the wrong word. It’s just that everything had started seeming much more exciting around the time Eliot went to put up a ward so that they’d stay hidden, after they’d used Alice’s Phosphoromancy to sneak in. By the time Margo had gone through the tuts to put up a silencing ward, he’d even begun to smile somewhat giddily.

Still, the giddiness is short-lived, leaving in its wake an ever-growing curiosity about the unkempt (and bleeding) version of Eliot that had appeared in the Cottage last night. Was it some ploy from The Beast? Or a genuine version of Eliot? Quentin has been reserving judgement until they could at least _see_ the Eliot Copy, but the closer they got the worse the curiosity became. 

Subtly, Quentin glances at the faces of his Partners in Crime and notes that he’s not the only one growing more anxious to see this through, now that Alice and Margo are starting the process of breaking the standard Keep Away wards on the door they’d identified as the doppelganger's. Eliot, standing grimly to Quentin’s right, has a tight frown on his face, like he gets when Todd says something particularly grating when he’s already had a miserable day. Still, Quentin can see the gleam of determined curiosity in his eyes, even as his friend stares firmly at the door the girls are unwarding.

Looking to Margo and Alice, Quentin can’t quite see their faces to read their emotions, but from what he can see, Margo's expression looks scarily reminiscent of her Welters Tournament Face, which Quentin thinks speaks to the severity of what she’s apparently anticipating. Alice looks significantly less intense in comparison to Margo, but her eyebrows are still scrunched in concentration and Quentin can see questions being held back in the set of her shoulders. He knows that as soon as they get in the room, his friends are _not_ going to be pulling any punches with their questions. Though, Quentin will admit that he kinda wishes Margo and Alice would stop with the bickering about how to best dismantle the ward, no matter how much faith he has in them.

Conveniently, that is the precise moment the ward breaks and an anticipatory silence falls over them all, building as Margo slowly turns the door handle. Somehow, the air feels charged.

The charge is promptly ruined by the Eliot on the bed.

“Well,” he croaks, and Quentin cringes, imagining how much it must hurt him to talk. “Took you all long enough.”

He definitely _sounds_ like Eliot. Quentin does a once-over of Maybe Eliot’s face. Certainly _looks_ like him, too.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Demands Margo, placing her hands on her hips, the taunt in Possibly Eliot’s voice having distracted her from whatever questions she had been planning to ask earlier.

The Doppelganger Eliot snorts derisively. “It _means_ that I’ve been waiting for you all to come and...visit me for hours, now,” he says sardonically. Margo makes a face and shifts her weight back onto her hips, angling to become defensive. She opens her mouth to reply, but Alice cuts her off.

“So you know we plan to question you?” she asks, a fish for information.

“Oh, please,” Maybe-Eliot-Maybe-Spy deflects, waving an idle hand through the air, as if everything he’s going to say for the rest of this conversation isn’t calculated to the extreme. “‘Question’ is such a _nice_ word for what we all know is about to happen, here.”

“And what _is_ going to happen?” This time it’s Quentin’s Eliot who speaks, still wearing the same glower as before, looking directly at the Possible-Body-Snatcher Eliot. Quentin turns back just in time to realize that the bed-bound man had been meeting the glare his Eliot had been sending him with a carefully blank visage, the first time he’d even looked over to any of them since the door had opened.

“What’s going on here,” Maybe Eliot says carefully, eyes darting quickly to take in all of their faces before landing back on Eliot’s. “Is that you all want to know who I am, how I got here, and why I… Well, the why behind a number of things, I guess.” He waves his hand again, rolling his eyes a little to add to the apathetic air surrounding him.

“ _Well?_ ” Margo prompts, also bringing up her hand to gesture, in a way that speaks of many a day spent condescending people, probably Todd.

“‘Well’, what?” Maybe Eliot asks, after a moment of tense silence, returning her demanding gaze as he does so. If Quentin wasn’t studying this strange Eliot’s face to see the differences with his own Eliot’s, he wouldn’t have noticed the subtle gritting of his jaw. As it is, he files it away for further examination, given that though this Maybe Eliot seems annoyed, he doesn’t seem nearly into the realm of teeth-destroying annoyed.

“Well, answer your own fucking questions, dickhead. If you’re so smart, you know we’re not going to leave without answers,” Margo snaps, maintaining eye contact with the doppelganger in a way that makes it obvious that she notices the slight twitch of his eye as she speaks. “And don’t even think about lying. It’ll be obvious from a mile away.”

Quentin has no idea how Margo intends to tell if Possibly Eliot is lying, but he has no doubt that she can. It appears the doppelganger knows this as well, given how quickly he concedes with nothing more than a put-upon sigh and a resigned closing of his eyes.

“Fine, I suppose I’ll start with the easy things,” he muses bitterly, turning his face back toward the ceiling, still gesturing with his hands. “Gather ‘round kids! Today’s story is called ‘The Time Eliot Ruined Everything And Then Ended Up Time Fucked For No Discernable Reason.’ It’s funny because it’s true.”

“Wait,” Alice says, stepping forward hesitantly while the rest of them process Maybe Eliot’s words. “‘Time Fucked?’ You’re from the future?”

The Maybe Eliot sets his eyes on her for a moment before shrugging dismissively. “Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that—”

“Complicated how?” Margo crosses her arms over her chest, evidently now mentally caught up with the conversation, even as Quentin is still trying to wrap his head around what should probably have been expected news, but somehow wasn’t. If this is to do with The Beast at all, it makes sense that he’d send a possessed version of Eliot from the future instead of going through the process of making, like, a golem or something. Curious, he lets himself look over to the Eliot standing next to him, trying to gage his reaction, but only finds a carefully controlled façade in the blank look on his friend’s face, broken only by a tensing at the corners of his mouth and a slight alarmed wideness to his eyes. Instinctively, Quentin wants to reach out and offer comfort, but the other, larger part of him rejects the idea before it’s even fully formed and he turns back to the action. “Are you saying _our_ Eliot turns into _you?_ ”

Maybe Eliot makes an odd face, somewhere between a grimace and a more pained expression, almost a sympathetic wince. “No, not necessarily. The simplest and most relevant way to put it is that I’m from an...alternate version of this world. He could become like me, but it’s...unlikely.”

Next to him, Eliot doesn’t quite relax, but it’s a close thing. Alice looks even more intrigued, somehow. Margo just looks increasingly suspicious. Quentin has no idea what his face must be doing, but he thinks it may be some sick combination of all his friends’ (and girlfriend’s) reactions.

“ _How_ unlikely?” Margo narrows her eyes. Potential-Body-Snatcher Eliot meets them confidently.

“Very,” he says firmly, and Margo’s posture relaxes back again, subtly. Like a lioness presented with a potential threat, pleased to find it’s not nearly as dire as it first appeared, but still wary. She makes a considering noise, but moves to a new line of questioning.

“So, how do we know you’re actually a version of Eliot at all? Maybe you’re just some monster dressed up like him.” She doesn’t accuse Maybe Eliot of working with The Beast at all, but Quentin knows she wants to, can see her building up to it.

Maybe Eliot makes the beginning of a strange, strangled noise, only to have it transform into a harsh coughing fit. Alarmed, and realizing that no one else is moving to help, presumably too shocked by the sudden reaction to move, Quentin reaches behind him to the counter and fills a small disposable cup with some tap water before hurriedly presenting it to Maybe Eliot.

“Thank you,” he wheezes, gently taking the proffered drink from Quentin’s hand, pointedly not looking at him. For a second, Quentin considers asking if he’s in any pain, but figures it’s best not to pry, even if they are here to get information out of him. It’s not like they can call a Healer, if he is, given what they’re doing. Still, he kinda feels bad, even if he is probably/maybe/possibly working for The Beast.

“You good, now?” Margo asks grudgingly, as if she’s worried about this Eliot-shaped stranger, but angry at herself for indulging it. As Quentin steps back and Maybe Eliot’s breaths start becoming less pained, he nods slowly and settles against the pillows again.

“So,” he starts, and his voice sounds even worse than before, but different somehow; raspy, where before he’d just sounded strangled. “What kind of proof are we talking, here? Secrets? Deep-seated fears…?” Maybe Eliot trails off, an opening to fill in the end of the question.

Quentin watches silently, noticing Alice doing the same, as Margo and Eliot begin to have one of their silent conversations over his head, communicating only in head tilts and faint eyebrow raising. As it continues, Quentin takes a second to look back at Maybe Eliot and notes that he is also watching the noiseless conversation, eyes going back and forth as though he were watching a tennis match. 

And there go any subconscious doubts that Quentin may have been holding as to whether or not this stranger is actually a version of Eliot Waugh, because the look in his eye? It’s not just intrigue or confusion. Rather, it’s _understanding_ , and Quentin has only ever met two people who could accurately decode and follow one of Eliot and Margo’s silent discussions, and they were Margo and Eliot.

Well, working for The Beast or not, at least he can be privately sure that this is some version of Eliot. He’s still going to let Margo question him, though; there’s no such thing as too much proof, right?

Quentin is jolted out of his thoughts by the end of Eliot and Margo’s nonverbal discussion.

“Alright,” starts Margo. “We’ve decided.”

“Great,” says Actually-Kinda Eliot, settling against the flimsy hospital pillow further. “What horrible secrets are we spilling today?” His tone is sarcastic, but Quentin can just barely pick up the hints of pained amusement buried behind it.

Margo purses her lips and looks to their Eliot, making it clear that they’d decided that this is _his_ call, more than anything else. Eliot only meets her eyes for a second before he turns back to his doppelganger.

“What’s m-our worst memory?” He asks, looking like he regrets it the instant the words leave his lips, but with a latent determination lying behind his eyes, voice surprisingly steady, given how much he apparently hates this entire situation. Honestly, Quentin thinks he’d probably be in a pretty similar state if it were _his_ doppelganger who’d randomly appeared and he’s suddenly glad that that’s not something he has to deal with. Though, it does make him curious about the state of the Quentin from Kinda-Sorta Eliot’s world. He doesn’t really plan on asking though, remembering the way New Eliot has been avoiding looking him in the eye; there are times when it’s really better to just...not ask.

“Oh,” says Other Eliot, looking surprised. “Huh. I was expecting something more difficult, but if that’s what you want, sure.” He shrugs, and next to him, Quentin’s Eliot adopts a horribly twisted expression, as though he’s in pain, but conflicted about it. Quentin kind of is, too, given that the ease at which Alternate Eliot speaks implies that whatever Quentin’s Eliot’s worst memory is, it’s faded compared to whatever has happened to Maybe-Spy Eliot. 

Quentin’s so caught up in his rambling thoughts about the Eliots that he almost misses what Other Eliot finishes with. “Logan Kinear.”

He says it so easily that it takes Quentin’s brain a moment to catch up with it, to place the name. This is not so for his Eliot, whose eyes widen immediately after the words leave his doppelganger’s mouth, as if he hadn’t expected the answer, despite being the one who asked the question.

“Well,” breathes Eliot, staring blankly at Other Eliot, still looking shocked, voice choked in a reflection of the way his face has contorted. “Got that right, at least.”

Quentin eyes Eliot worriedly, noticing Margo doing the same on his friend’s other side. Alice is just flicking her gaze between the two Eliots, a look of intense concentration on her face, but Quentin can see the vague concern hiding in her eyes. For a second, he even feels a stab of misplaced anger towards her for not being more concerned about their Eliot, but shakes himself out of it quickly. He may be pretty close with the second year, but Alice isn’t and she doesn’t have to be just because they’re dating.

Then, Quentin looks to the bed-bound Eliot and studies him for a second, pleased to find that he looks at least mildly affected by what he’s done to Quentin’s Eliot. Then again, his grimace of maybe sympathy may just stem from the glare Margo is sending him. Quentin can never really be sure about the reasons behind peoples’ expressions when Margo’s glares are involved.

After a few seconds more, Eliot has rebuilt his composure and is back to looking only slightly more ruffled than he’d been in the moments before they’d entered the room. It’s at that point that the New Eliot decides to open his mouth again.

“So,” he begins, an attempt to get this show on the road, while also breaking up the tense atmosphere that had begun to take up residence in the small room. “Now that I’ve...proven myself, anyone have more questions? Not sure what I’ll be able to answer, but since I’m here, feel free, I guess.”

Alice’s eyebrows twist up further. “Why wouldn’t you be able to answer our questions? There’s no one here to tell you what not to...say to us.” 

He raises an eyebrow at her blatant attempt at digging for information. “Well, contrary to popular belief, I don’t know everything,” he says, sounding distinctly amused. “And I’m trying not to actively piss Fogg off, so.” He shrugs.

“Why would telling us anything piss Fogg off?” Quentin asks, deciding he should probably be participating more in this interrogation, anyway. And if taking some pressure off of his Eliot is a convenient consequence to this, then there’s really no way to go wrong, is there?

“And since when does any version of Eliot care about what Fogg thinks?” Huffs Alice before adding a hasty addendum for their Eliot’s sake. “No offence Eliot.” 

“None taken,” he returns drily, seemingly completely recovered from any shock from before, the only indication he even had been being where Margo’s hand is still resting carefully on one of his crossed arms, pointedly ignored by everyone in the room.

“Oh, I don’t give a single fuck what Fogg thinks,” scoffs the Other Eliot. “But my stitches do, since _this_ infirmary gave them to me. And, because my stitches care, I can’t tell you any spoilers. Not right now, anyway.” He smiles apologetically, but his biting tone mostly negates any tiny gestures of sympathy that he’s offering.

“Why in the hell does _Fogg_ care about spoilers from _an alternate universe_?” Margo asks, annoyance strung through her words.

“He just told me to shut up, so I am,” Other Eliot intones. “I’ll still answer some things though, like, I don’t know, exam answers. I can do exam answers. Probably. My memory of all this is a bit foggy.”

“Wow, how useful.” Alice says derisively, looking deeply unimpressed.

“Well, you know me,” says Other Eliot, smiling at her mockingly. “I try.”

-

For a time, Quentin can’t say how long, nothing exists besides him and Julia and the space in between. All he can do is stare at her, frozen by her wary, confused gaze as she watches him back. For her, he thinks, this must be a moment from a nature documentary. Here, the young animal stands at the bank of a murky river. She’s been burned before, in different ways, by the strange things in her world. How does she know the river is safe? How does she know she won’t boil in it?

For Quentin, this is a moment of refraction; a change in direction, medium. A change in the way he’s seeing her. The Julia of the last few months is starting to come into focus, now that he’s looking at a Julia That Was.

The weight of it is horrible, but what it brings with it is even worse, somehow. It’s like the blanket he’d been dampening his emotions with has come off, a ripping of a metaphorical bandage off of the bullet wound of the last few months. It feels an awful lot like the waves of horrible, angry clarity whenever he’d see the Monster, whenever the waves of numbness would recede.

Now, he feels like he’s scattering, atomized again, being torn apart by his own magic. One Minor Mending to cleave his world into so many pieces he’d never be able to find them again, even if he had all the time in the world. But, then, he’d been shattering long before he’d ever set foot in the Mirror Realm.

And that’s the root of it, isn’t it? He’d been spiraling and she’d...she’d just... He wishes _his_ Julia had looked more like _this_ Julia, the last time he’d seen her, with her back straight and steel shimmering behind the suspicion in her eyes. Maybe then he’d feel less shitty for being mad at her, here in this newly remembered awareness.

But...Quentin’s not just angry. He’s...conflicted. That’s the right word. He’s bitter and upset and sympathetic all at the same time. It’s like his brain can’t decide between wanting to hug her or punch her, because with every ireful thought he's thinking now, he remembers the last time he saw her. He remembers how broken she’d looked, curled up on herself in that chair by the window; how she hadn’t even been able to wave back to him before he crossed through the mirror. Then, he feels bad about the pain his death must’ve caused her. It’s replaced quickly with anger at 23, for making her that small in the first place, for adding to any grief that he might have (definitely) caused her.

But then he erases all of that because this Julia isn’t _his_ Julia, just like Penny 23 isn’t Penny 40, like how the Penny of this timeline won’t be either of them. For some reason, this just makes his chest feel heavier, like someone added five more pounds to the weight already there.

But, regardless, Quentin shouldn’t be angry. He has no right. _He’s_ the one who didn’t ask for help. He could have; he should have.

He didn’t.

It’s not Julia’s job to take care of him and so he’s not allowed to be angry about her _not_ doing that. She’d had her own shit to take care of. He’s not allowed to be mad about that.

‘But,’ says some part of him, buried deep down inside him where he hides the important things; things like _peaches and plums_ and _proof of concept_ and _that’s not me and that’s definitely not you_. All the things he hides from. ‘You shouldn’t have to ask. Friends are supposed to see that.’

Quentin kinda hates that part of him. It sounds an awful lot like Eliot or Margo or maybe even Julia herself, the one from before everything, the one from before the Monster and the Sister. And maybe that part is right. Maybe that’s why he hates it.

Because he hadn’t been eating or sleeping or talking and Julia had just...not seen it. Or, if she had, she hadn’t said anything. At least, until that conversation on the stairs, where she asked him to be an anchor for her as a goddess. As if he had enough energy to be an anchor, as if he hadn’t already disintegrated past the point of that being an effective way to pull him in again. He was already too much like sand for that to happen.

For a moment, Quentin considers what Margo would’ve said about that, if she’d been there to see it, if she’d been looking to see it. He thinks that she would probably be angry at Julia. He thinks that Eliot would maybe be angry at Julia. He thinks that maybe he should be angrier.

But he isn’t. The anger he feels is the slowly burning type that ends with hot tears and harsh words and hugging, probably. It’s tied up with guilt and fear and all the emotions the Monster had left him with. It burns him, slowly, like a hot coal lying in his chest, waiting to be put out somehow, or else fanned to be set aflame again.

But the Julia in front of him isn’t the one the ember in his chest wants to burn. She never will be. This is a moment of looking into the past, of seeing what was, and knowing that _this woman_ will never grow up to be the Julia Wicker, Our Lady of the Tree, that he knows. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s not.

Now, he wonders.

Quentin wonders if his Julia would know. He wonders what she would’ve said, if he’d asked her what she wanted to be; if Penny had actually asked. He wonders if it would have changed anything if he had.

He wonders what he’d say if his Julia were here, if she were the Julia in front of him. He doesn’t think he knows. He’s not sure he’d say anything.

Either way, all he can do is watch Julia and all she can do is watch him. It makes for a tense atmosphere and doesn’t help the weight in his chest at all.

The eternity is broken by James, who has apparently had enough of being the awkward third wheel in the staring contest that’s happening in his living room.

“Well,” he says, his uneasiness only thinly veiled by the forced smile fixed onto his face. “I’ll let you two...talk.” He shuffles gracelessly over to the door just beyond his kitchen and disappears into what Quentin vaguely recalls being his bedroom.

There’s another pause, but this time it’s one of assessment, appraisal. It goes on for just long enough that Quentin almost slips back into his thoughts, but manages to quickly do a mental sweep of the topic. Thinking too hard about the Pennys or Julia is just...depressing. He doesn’t have time for it anyway. He looks up to the Julia in front of him, and ignores all the ways he subconsciously wants to compare her to _his Julia_. It’s not fair, to him or her. He’s already learned this lesson with Penny 23, anyway.

“So,” she breaks the silence. “You’re not the Quentin I saw yesterday.” 

It’s not a question, not really, but he replies, anyway. “No, I’m not,” he agrees, nodding. She’s assessing him, still, eyes narrowed, arms crossed, head just slightly tilted, as if she were trying to find the edges of a mask, or something.

“Who are you, then?” Straight to the point. Okay.

“I’m Quentin Coldwater,” he says. “I’m just not _your_ Quentin Coldwater.” He shifts a little on the leather couch, growing uncomfortable from balancing there on his knees for so long. The new Julia seems to recognize this, because she walks, guardedly, past the glass coffee table to sit on the other leather couch, opposite him. Quentin sighs a little in relief as he settles back into a more normal seating position again. After shifting a bit more to get comfortable, he lets himself look at her again. She’s watching him, still.

“What do you mean?” she asks, leaning forward to study him, her hands tangling with each other as she rests her elbows on her knees. Quentin feels...judged, somehow, and it’s foreign entirely for the fact that this is _Julia_ , even if she’s not the one he knows.

“It’s sort of complicated,” he says, because it kinda is, even if it isn’t. Mostly he just doesn’t want to talk about it, about all the timelines where they die, about the times _he’s_ died, in this world or the next. How can he even begin to explain, especially knowing that she’s going to have _questions_.

“Well, make it less complicated, then.”

“Okay,” Quentin sighs, quitting while he’s ahead. He knows that when Julia, _any_ Julia, gets like this, there’s no keeping her from getting what she wants. “Okay.”

And so he explains.

Not...not all of it; not even most of it. He doesn’t want her to ask questions; he doesn’t have it in him to answer any. He tells her what he thinks she needs to know and watches as her face is slowly weighed down by his words.

He tells her about the thirty nine (forty, forty-one… but he’d never say it) deaths, watches as she realizes that her Quentin will die, too. He even tells her a little of what he knows of Timeline 23. He doesn’t tell her about the him that was the Beast. He can’t do that to her.

 _Isn’t it enough,_ he thinks, _to know that your best friend has died before and will die again, and that there’s nothing to be done for it?_ He wonders if he should apologize, but finds himself stuck somewhere between unwilling and unable. It wouldn’t mean anything if he did, to either of them. When his thoughts are like this, he almost never says anything. It wouldn’t do anything to make this better, anyway.

He doesn’t tell her much about his timeline, either; there’s no need to tear at a wound like that when it hasn’t even stopped bleeding yet. Even just thinking about it, about opening his mouth and actually talking about _any_ of it, is excruciating. He wishes it wasn’t a familiar feeling.

Still, he talks, alternating between watching her face and studying the glass coffee table between them as he does. He kind of hates glass, now, but it’s the only thing he can look at without feeling like he’s still running away or giving up. In a way, the glass is just the lesser of two evils; in another, it’s just a different one. More intimate, perhaps, but an evil all the same. He can’t think about long enough to be sure; doesn’t want to. The pain of reflection cuts too much for clear thoughts, anyway.

When he’s finally told her all he can, all that he will, she looks hollowed out. He thinks he probably does, too; he definitely feels like that, now, the wave of numbness coming back into high tide, as the clarity and anger shuffle off into the wings. Still, she’s not as completely broken as he is; he can see how behind her empty expression she’s contemplative, calculating. For a second, they both sit there in silence.

Quentin really, _really_ hates silence.

Julia breaks it first.

“So,” she starts, expression shifting as her determination takes center stage. “How do I stop _my_ Q from dying?” 

Quentin’s eyes widen, driven up by the force of his surprise. “What?”

“You heard me,” she says, and Quentin can see a spark in her eyes, one that he hasn’t seen in what feels like forever. It had been so long since his Julia had looked at him with anything but worry and pity and a horrible blankness. 

Vaguely, Quentin feels like he’s been stabbed.

He breathes out slowly. He should’ve known… He should’ve kept his mouth shut. 

Oh, well. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, and all that.

He knows before he’s even begun to answer that this won’t end well.

“You can’t,” he says, shakily. 

Julia glares at him, now, a sharp narrowing of the eyes that brings him back to being twenty three and standing in the middle of the street, telling her she should just give up on magic. “ _Why not?_ ” she hisses at him, and Quentin can see the fear lurking in the tensing of her muscles. He wonders if she intends to pounce and rip him apart like a predator or lash out in fear, a bid for self-preservation, like a wounded animal. He begins to wonder what his Julia would do in this situation, but then he remembers that it doesn't matter; she’s not here, anyway.

The weight in his chest feels like it’s crushing him; it’s like gravity is calling for his soul. Then again, maybe it’s just the Underworld, since he is supposed to be dead.

_(No, some part of him whispers, You’re back. You’re alive. That was death. This is life. Never confuse them again.)_

“Because,” he says. “This timeline has to go badly for me to even be here from my timeline,” he continues, pushing through the emotions that are holding him hostage, threatening harm with every squirming beat of his heart; one wrong move and it’s over. Again. “If it doesn’t, then the time loop doesn’t reset and so I wouldn’t exist to come back and have this conversation with you in the first place.”

The horrible _twinge_ he feels in his chest when he sees how her face falls is the worst one so far. The pain of understanding is often the cruelest kind, he thinks. He wishes she didn’t have to go through this; he wishes he could help.

“What am I supposed to do, then?” she asks, desperation ringing in her voice. Quentin doesn’t say anything for a moment, letting all his focus rest solely on her face even as his mind works a hundred miles a minute. He wets his lips.

“Well,” he says hesitantly. “There may be some way to save your me.”

Julia perks up immediately, but remains skeptical, as if she’s afraid that he’s lying to her. Which, well, he might be. Quentin really isn’t sure, himself, but he rather hopes not. He doesn’t need any more guilt to add to the mountain already forming in his chest.

“How?” she asks, digging into him with her eyes. Quentin couldn’t’ve looked away if he’d tried.

Instead, he leans forward on the couch, letting his eyes bore into hers just as she has to him. Then, his face a tightly held approximation of surety, he opens his mouth and speaks with a lot more confidence than he actually feels.

“I need you to get me into Brakebills.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me what you think, please! Also, would y’all like if I replied to comments? I haven’t so far because it feels a bit weird and sort of like I'm falsely inflating the comment count, but I’d like to know you guys think. Either way, know that I read every single one and that they fill me with an immense amount of joy! That said, feel free to reach out to me on my [tumblr](https://enevera.tumblr.com/), where I will definitely reply!
> 
> Also, the next chapter might take me awhile, sorry! I've got some testing stuff coming up and my classes really don't want me to have free time lol. That said, I guess this is my birthday chapter, too, given that I doubt I'll be able to get much out until maybe early December. 
> 
> Also, if you live in the USA and are of age and all that, _PLEASE VOTE!_ It's very important, no matter who you vote for! It will make a difference!!
> 
> Okay, politics over with, have a great week, everyone!


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